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04 Mar 2015 11:16:19am

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"Those that celebrate scientism and ontological or restrictive naturalism do so because what they have set out to achieve is the banishment of the divine, no matter what the cost. These fundamentalist atheists will bring the whole house down so as to leave no room for God. They are, in short, willing to cut off their faces to spite their noses - willing to leave us all faceless."

This is an inane, silly, and indeed factually wrong statement. What many atheists, labelled fundamentalist by Conor, want is for your religious types to demonstrate your god(s) exist, then we will stop being atheists. That is all. Not that hard, you should think, back your claims up. Instead of some cognitive, factual, reality altering truth, what we get is a wall of philosophical ramblings. These ramblings try to tell me I restrict my world view to the (best) set of tools to explore and understand the world. In so using these somehow limited tools, this science, I ignore all these other tools, all these other sets of philosophy. These sets of philosophy support Conor in his work and worldview, yet are of such a practical and limited application to reality (you know, what is in front of you), you might wonder why bother?

For example, it is as if Conor is saying, that a tool of science, the Geiger counter doesn't work without allowing his own tools of philosophy let us call it “the non-ontological philosophical wand” to work with it when exploring the world. I honestly wonder if Conor would unpack both tools as he (hypothetically) wanders around Fukishima. Which tool would give him more information? Which would tell him his time is up and he should leave the area or risk radiation sickness? Which tool can he leave in a hotel room and forget about in his hypothetical wanderings? If you said his non-ontological philosophical wand you have given yourself a good chance to avoid spending the next few weeks taking massive doses of Potassium Iodide.

That’s the difference, Conor has attempted to poke philosophical holes in reality and its best exploratory tool, science. Yet, what he provides as an alternative is functionally useless. It doesn’t allow humanity to grow and it most certainly will not fly him to the Moon, Mars or beyond. Now, if his philosophy could give me back the time it took me to read that article, then we might start to allow he has something in his philosophy.